Flight simulators are widely used in the aerospace industry and government for requirements definition, design development, and pilot training. By using the proper simulation, an aerospace designer can project the capabilities of advanced technologies into the future with confidence. With credible simulations, those responsible for establishing the requirements of new aircraft can accurately develop the specifications for such aircraft. Accurate simulations are essential to training aircrews to fly new aircraft and for training personnel in existing aircraft. Aircraft simulations form a very significant part of the aerospace research, development and training community. Large amounts of money are spent to make flight simulations more realistic and effective. As the cost of fuel continues to increase, there is created a greater need for credible flight simulation for pilot training and pilot currency. This trend toward increased simulation training is readily apparent in the airline industry and the military. Simulation of hazardous and expensive military missions such as combat and weapons employment make more and more sense from both a safety and financial standpoint.
One of the most difficult tasks to realistically and adequately simulate is air-to-air combat. Close-in or within visual range (WVR) air-to-air combat is the most difficult subset of air combat to simulate, particularly when multiple aircraft representations are required.
Simulators designed for air-to-air combat are usually large, expensive and complex devices with both head-down cockpit mock-ups complete with active controls and displays and head-up, out of the cockpit visual displays. The out of the cockpit visual display typically has a horizon referenced earth-sky projection system and a separate target projection system which shows the azimuth, elevation, size and attitude of adversary aircraft in the hemisphere above the plane of the wings of the aircraft being simulated. The size of the adversary or target aircraft is used to visually estimate the range to the target just as in actual air-to-air combat. Simulations of this type require surrounding the cockpit with large domes onto which video or computer generated images are projected, or multiple CRT's honeycombed and coordinated in such a manner as to provide a continuous outside the cockpit view. These methods of providing out of cockpit visual displays suitable for air-to-air combat are very expensive in both hardware and software. As a direct result of their high cost, simulators of this type have been used to simulate only a limited number of combatants, usually only one versus one (1v1).
With today's technology of all-aspect air-to-air missiles, low observable aircraft and high maneuver rate aircraft, simulating a large number of aircraft in close-in air-to-air engagements is becoming more and more important. It is necessary to simulate a multiple aircraft flight engaging many adversary aircraft (e.g., M aircraft on one side versus N aircraft on the other side) in a large scale MvN air battle in order to enable correct design decisions, to establish critical requirements for future aircraft, and to adequately train aircrews in realistic military missions. Aircrews preparing for combat of the future should be able to train realistically in the large scale air battles which they expect to encounter. Currently, the cost of building many multiple dome or other effective simulations to accomplish this task for research, development, and training is prohibitive.
Thus, low cost, manned, interactive crewstations with displays that provide credible close-in combat are clearly needed to meet the critical needs of research, development and training. Manned, interactive crewstations have successfully been developed and used in simulating beyond visual range (BVR) combat. However, the displays in these BVR stations do not provide adequate information for the dynamic maneuvering of close-in within visual range (WVR) combat. The key to developing a manned, interactive crewstation capable of credible close-in combat is the development of an expanded field-of-view (EFOV) graphics display which provides the information content to the pilot equivalent to that provided in an expensive domed air combat simulation.